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Special Notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.All sold picture lots (lots 300-668) not cleared by 2.00pm on Monday 20 November 2000 will be removed and may be cleared after 9.00am on Tuesday 21 November 2000 from the warehouse of Cadogan Tate Fine Art Removals Limited. (See below.)
Cadogan Tate Ltd., Fine Art Services
Cadogan House, 2 Relay Road,
London W12 7SJ.
Telephone: 44 (0) 20 8735 3700.
Facsimile: 44 (0) 20 8735 3701.
Rates (Pictures)
An initial transfer and administration charge of £3.20 and a storage charge of £1.60 per lot per day will be payable to Cadogan Tate. These charges are subject to VAT and an insurance surcharge. (Exceptionally large pictures will be subject to a surcharge.)

Pre-Lot Text

The Battle of the Dogger Bank, 5th August 1781

In October 1777, two years after the outbreak of the American War of Independence, the new United States' army gained its first notable success against British forces at Saratoga. In the wake of this humiliation, the major European powers, led by France, decided to ally themselves to the infant American republic in the hope of making territorial gains at England's expense and, following France's lead in 1778, most of Britain's neighbours had joined the alliance against her by 1781. One of the nations most anxious to regain some of its former maritime supremacy was the Netherlands and nine months after they entered the fray, opposing Dutch and English squadrons met in their only encounter of the War.

Neither squadron was intended to be a battle fleet; rather, both were escorting home valuable Baltic convoys when, totally unexpectedly, each sighted the other off the North Sea's Dogger Bank at daybreak on 5th August 1781. Unusually in any naval engagements, the opponents were of identical strength, with each squadron consisting of seven ships-of-the-line supported by - for the Royal Navy - four frigates and one armed cutter and - for the Dutch - five frigates as well as, coincidentally, a single armed cutter. The English commander, Vice-Admiral Hyde Parker, ordered his convoy to set course for England and then manoeuvred his fleet before signalling for close action at about 8.00a.m. The British line bore down on the Dutch, under Rear-Admiral Zoutmann, and once joined, the battle raged for three-and-a-half hours, becoming increasingly desperate as neither side was able to gain the upper hand. Eventually exhausting themselves, the two squadrons drew apart without a decisive conclusion, the Dutch convoy having saved itself by running for shelter into the Texel estuary halfway through the battle. Had Hyde Parker's ships been fully manned and in better repair he would probably have won the day; as it was, the Royal Navy's best vessels were elsewhere, mostly in the West Indies, and there was also a critical shortage of trained seamen due to the extended nature of the War. Nevertheless, despite very high casualties on both sides, Parker at least succeeded in persuading the Dutch not to venture out of port again which, in itself, helped the Royal Navy in its efforts to defeat other enemy fleets across the globe.